TRACES OF TRACY

Just off Dallas' Central Expressway, also known as I-45 and I-75, stands an odd, winding wall of Tricor steel.  People, mainly the hillbillies and the rednecks, puzzle over the piece, mainly because it forms a steel barrier that bisects a small park that is already in three pieces because of the asphalt and cement.  Lined with live oaks, the piece is also covered with grackle offal most of the time.  Every once in awhile, I'll walk by the stench simply to admire the piece.  The artist?  The man who married Tracy. 

The year 1979 was one of restless awakening to me, even if that sounds corny and a little too cliched for even me to bear, but it was the truth.  I was a late-bloomer, and while literally exploding into the early makings of what eventually became the city's Deep Ellum party machine, I met Tracy.  She was tall.  Looked a little like Diane Keaton, only a little less shapely.  She had an entertaining grin, and we'd met while skinny-dipping in a mutual friend's pool at around two in the morning. 

Since there were so few decent clubs that weren't stuck in the classic rock era or the progressive country scene, house parties were the rage, and when Tracy and her roommate had an "art party" at her apartment, now torn-down and replaced by a luxury high-rise on Northwest Highway, North Dallas's main drag, and the Swift brothers, and many other movers and shakers of the future were there.  I was a little shy, but Tracy sought me out and invited me to a poetry "salon" at the apartment a few nights later. 

Remember the scene in the movie "Animal House", where Belushi is walking up the stairs and some squelchy dude is singing a dumb folk song about "the pit of a cherry"?  That's how it felt.  All the super-weird Southern Methodist MFAs were there.  I read my poetry, and Jack Myers, who was one of Tracy's instructors, smiled and said he liked it--just before he ignored me completely and concentrated on his brood.  Because I went to one of "those measly state schools" for low-income students, I wasn't part of the creme-de-la-creme of Dallas poetry.  This was before Myers made a name for himself.  He, like most Dallas poets at the time, struggled, reading in bars like the San Francisco Rose and the Old Moon, both on Greenville Avenue. 

It must have been hard for those pioneers. 

Tracy saw how I was kind of skipped out of the circle and joined me.  She took my hand and stroked my wrist.  From there, I don't remember a whole lot. 

Immediately, Tracy and myself got involved.  Tracy had house (or apartment) parties almost every weekend, and as I got to know her, I remember guys like Tim Seibles, another pioneer who gleaned immense popularity before he moved to the Northeast, asking me, "Still hanging in there?"  My self-esteem was so low that I didn't quite get it.  I was thinking: I'm barely holding on here.  They were thinking: Man alive!  That woman's a human roller-coaster.  At that party, I stepped back and watched Tracy, and soon learned she was sleeping with five other guys.  Hell, she was young, I was young, and half a dozen young men were waiting for me to drop-out so they could move-in. 

I still don't know why Tracy slowly weeded-out the others and chose me.  I was naive, a little innocent and, yes, my typical self.  No masks here.  Never have been, and never will be masks.  Pretense moves me into meanness.  And Tracy and I could talk to one another from across the room.  We understood one another.  She wasn't playing games either.  She was simply trying to find a man she could trust.  I learned I was the man she could trust. 

My close friend at the time, a musician named David, was all excited for me.  He was telling me, "Gordon, now do you believe dreams can come real?" 

I shrugged my shoulders.  Um, I guess....

Tracy held a surprise birthday party for me.  I hadn't had one of those in a long time.  She found where I was living (with my mom) and visited my mom to tell her all about the surprise.  She was a forthright, sincere young lady, the daughter of the U.S. diplomat to Thailand, and she happened to be an artistic genius.  Her abstract impressionism was stunning.  She painted a painting of a Godzilla-like character, and as she painted and I wrote (I had a "big job" at The Dallas Morning News"), she told me, "Oh.  This one?  This is you." 

Soon, I learned Tracy was barely getting by.  Especially after her roommate found a man to live with, Tracy was hard-scrabbling it like all young artists--waiting tables.  But the money wasn't enough.  And, just as my mother simply did not approve of me moving into the arts and humanities, Tracy's parents did not support her choice to become an artist.  We were in the same boat.  It was always like, "When are you going to get a REAL job?" 

That's when I noticed Tracy had started to smell a little like cheese. 

I asked her.  She started wearing perfume, but my curiousness made me search her kitchen: She had an empty refrigerator.  All she had was 1) the cheese she could get from her job and 2) black olives she also filched from the job.  She was starving.  Jack Myers was quite concerned about her.  He worked hard to get her a scholarship.  I bought her $70 worth of groceries.  She didn't want to take them, but I filled her cabinets. 

That's when she asked me to move-in with her.  I knew this wasn't a good idea; we'd only been dating three months.  I told her I didn't feel comfortable with that.  Was I crazy?  Not really.  I was only being prudent.  Although we were sexually compatible, she and I simply did not know one another well enough: recipe for disaster. 

Tracy and I in bed: She'd turn-down her window A/C to 55 simply to keep me in bed.  We'd play and wrestle all day.  One night, we got intense and the AM radio station, classical music, began to stray from its signal, and Tracy and I made-believe our energy had done it.  I really did like Tracy.  She was a wonderful person. 

After she knew I couldn't move in, she found another man.  When we broke-up, for the first time in my life, a woman knelt-down before me, took my hand and gave me "the talk".  She was really sorry.  I knew she was only doing what she needed to do for herself.  She found an artist.  He was vain, selfish and very controlling.  He wouldn't let Tracy out of his sight.  For an independent woman like her, this was torture, but at times she'd escape and find me.  We carried on for almost a year behind the scenes.  Mr. Control was all about himself.  He was one pompous little shit. 

I came to her rescue a number of times when she'd gotten too drunk and the men were circling her like sharks.  She, like me, comes off as naive and a little too "spacy", but that's her mind.  She's in the clouds.  Or was.  I haven't seen her in 20 years. 

In fact, the last time I saw Tracy was an afternoon I was feeling really alone.  I'd come to a performance art piece at the new DMA--where some guy talked nothing but confusion for two straight hours.  After the show, which was a mock interview, Tracy and I found each other again in the crowded hall. 

"Are you all right?"  Tracy wanted to know. 

"I'll get by," I smiled.  We hugged.  Then I went to unchain my bicycle and ride home on a hot summer day.  It felt so good to have seen her.  She was at art school in New York.  She still lives there.  She married the man who sculpted that odd wall as a conceptual statement. 

Dallasites think it's "weird".  As if Richard Serra's work is "weird".  It is not weird. 

MEMORIES OF THE HARKNESS MONSTER

This week, Angelina Jolie announced she had her ovaries extracted because she has a genetic marker that indicates to doctors that she is more prone to cervical cancer than other women may be.  Jolie had already undergone breast cancer surgery to extract pre-cancerous tissues.  My heart swells at the sheer bravery of Jolie.  One of the most beautiful women in the world is willing to risk early menopause in order to save her future from the crushing ordeal of chemo and possibly even radiation. 

And then my heart swells when I think of the best girlfriend I ever had.  The Harkness Monster is what I called that willful woman, a woman who was an animal rights activist, a no-smoking advocate who actually got punched-out in the old Sears store on Greenville and Ross when she demanded some schmuck put-out his cigarette, and a woman who had a lime green Toyota pick-up that bore a bumper sticker dismissing Toyota as a maker of bad cars.  With her round glasses, The Harkness Monster looked oddly Japanese, and she was famous for answering her door in her underwear.  She had a t-shirt that read FUCK as a way of putting-off men who wanted to use her for entertainment purposes, although when she wore it around me it meant something else entirely. 

The Harkness Monster made beautiful lamps out of old tin cans.  She had her entire house lit with track lights.  She had a dog named Ranger who barked and growled at anyone but her--and I.  She was the finest calligrapher in Dallas, and had an ongoing contract with Southern Methodist University to write graduates' names on diplomas--but when she signed my name to a party invitation, the unique design of the lettering was the earmark of a true artist at work.  I will never forget The Harkness Monster.  Friend, frenemy, lover, assistant, supervisor, craftswoman, artist and animal whisperer. 

I met her at a party a neighbor of hers threw way back in December, 1979, and while Kim Malin, a friend of mine who also happened to be a Playboy girl of the month, was busily talking-off my ear, I felt instant attraction to The Harkness Monster.  My attraction comes from the heart and soul.  Lust is dust. 

I talked to her, liked what I heard, and got her phone number.  When I decided to have a party of my own later that spring, Harkness showed-up with a black-and-white TV "so I don't miss Dallas" and sat on the floor, spread-eagled with the television between her legs.  She didn't socialize much.  But I got the message.  And I called her out. 

The Harkness Monster didn't feel like a sexual being any more.  Why?  She'd had pre-cancerous tumors in her breast and ovaries removed.  Although she was absolutely beautiful in a Harkness Monster way--green eyes, dusky skin, slender and light, she felt like it was the end of her life as a woman.  She was hurting.  For that, I liked her more.  She was genuine, not a little girl out playing games.  Reticent at first, The Harkness Monster gradually let me in.  I worked at the nearby Albertsons, and in the evenings after work, I would bicycle over to her house and spend the night with her.  Nude as a couple of clowns we watched Tom Snyder and The Tomorrow Show and slept in each other's arms when we fell asleep on the couch. 

The Harkness Monster soon warmed up.  As did I.  I have always been a little shy with women at first.  There are good reasons for that, but once the light switch flicks on, it is hard to turn-off.  We had our songs: "Your kiss, your kiss is what I miss" was one.  "The Long and Winding Road" was another.  The Harkness Monster had been left behind a number of times. 

The Harkness Monster was seeing several other men at the time, and I had to share her.  This was not always easy, but because I really loved her right from the start, I knew she needed freedom and a way to get her chops back.  She even slept with that neighbor-friend of mine.  He thought he'd really pulled the wool over my head.  I always know way more than I ever let-on to those who take me for a fool. 

She worked as an artisan for a man named Joseph, but he was a complainer and rather vain to say the least.  He wanted "something serious" with her, but she had more fun with me.  It wasn't a relationship based on sex or sexuality as much as it was based on the much more solid ground of trust and mutual respect.  When he decided The Harkness Monster was going to be "his hostess" for a party in the then ruined mess of Deep Ellum, she secretly sent me an invitation I still have to this day.  Her calligraphy?  Breath-taking. 

At the party, however, I got into a sort of traffic jam: Two former lovers of mine were also present.  Tracy, a talented artist, was there with the man she was then living with, and of course, Tracy flirted with her eyes.  The only reason we had broken up was because I didn't feel ready to move-in with her.  We carried on behind the scenes many times after the relationship was officially over.  Then there was Ann.  Also a talented artist.  Ann and I shared one peak experience: making love in her apartment pool at three in the morning.  All those women were sowing their wild oats.  They were pretty, were experimenting with sex, and I had to go along to get along. 

All three were in the same room together, but none of them knew about the other.  Haha! 

I simply kept to the strangers in the room, mainly because I was already good and unhappy that Joseph had put The Harkness Monster in such a position.  She continued, however, to give me a big wink, over and over, and yes, it was quite funny. 

The party was full of a bunch of over-inflated artists, three lovers and myself.  The Harkness Monster was "the perfect hostess", and by the end of the evening, there she sat on a porch swing inside his studio as I looked on in private anguish.  I was jealous.  Wink-wink.  Finally, I said, "I give up, I've had enough to drink to kill a horse." 

I drove home to my apartment on Oram Street, feeling like I was going to have to go through another night alone without her.  But when I drove up the driveway, I saw The Harkness Monster's lime-green Toyota in the drive.  She was sitting on the stairs with a bottle of Reunite wine between her legs.  The message was more obvious than a woman practically shouting at me while sitting on a music amplifier in a bar. 

That's what I liked about The Harkness Monster: a surprise a moment. 

The Harkness Monster was also still carrying on with her ex husband, mainly because she still loved him.  She'd divorced him because all he wanted to do was sit around the house and smoke dope.  Once he was on his own, he had to get to working, and The Harkness Monster helped him often, finishing swimming pools. 

I remember the shimmering nights we spent walking through nearby parkland in Lakewood.  I remember our private jokes.  I remember her angry stubbornness.  I remember saving countless animals from destruction.  She'd made a life for herself as a legal assistant for a federal judge.  She had a big house.  To watch her wake from her spell and regain her womanhood was astounding to me.